The Yamato Effect
by ChakiChakiGirl
Summary: A light novel take-off of PS-2's Lucky Star sci-fi/fantasy game "Ryouou Gakuen Otosai". PDF version with images on request. The truth beyond mysterious Yamato is revealed...


_**The Yamato Effect**_

by Dee "ChakichakiGirl" Eon

A light novel take-off of PS2's "Lucky Star: Ryouou Gakuen Otosai"

**Foreword:** Since the PS2 game "Lucky Star: Ryouou Gakuen Otosai" won't be converted into English or expanded into a standalone story, I composed a sci-fi tale from its Yamato storyline. Please note this is a fanfic "sequel" to Yamato's story and NOT the game's itself, though it's heavily derived from it with a highly speculated background. Thus it is NOT Lucky Star/PS2 "canon"; for time and sanity's sake (not to mention don't know Japanese) I didn't even try to extract every story branch of a game literally consisting of hundreds of alternates, but instead extrapolated situations from game scenes and translations by gallant otaku who also furnished nice trial images for the PDF version. Future expansion on condensed passages is possible, pending feedback, and any game "spoiler" mentions are totally incidental. A work in progress, my goal for TYE is as a "Lucky Star Murder Case/Pocket Travelers" grade light-novel, hence the PDF format I'm experimenting with to eventually create an illustrated doujin. If you wish the PDF version (with images) of this chapter or an advanced look at Chapter Two (a month before the FanfictionNet version is posted) just e-mail me at DeeEon at mac dott com. I also have a somewhat different parallel version of this story at your request.

Now enjoy – and please constructively critique!

Dee

** - - - -  
**

The huge alien anxiously watched the white-streaked blue sphere rapidly swell on the holo view screen and again made desperate psycho-servo adjustments to the living craft's controls to no avail. Not only was the little star-shaped survey ship's warp drive field severely disrupted by the bizarre gravity wave impulse from nowhere, but the feedback spike it induced fried most every circuit aboard, leaving the craft in a helpless powerless plunge toward the night-side edge of the planet's largest ocean. Stoically, the alien considered crashing into these depths to keep any trace of it and its vessel from the planet's natives, but held out hope of some repair in a safe area and angled toward a large island's remote mountainous region which the view screen made night like day as the alien struggled to rein the last ergs of control.

There!

A vast grassy field divided by a highway, doubtlessly agricultural, whose soil just might be soft enough to cushion a crash-landing and allow the cloaking device to function for the repair nano-bots to get to work unnoticed and unmolested. All nav control completely gone now, the alien activated the anti-collision force-field ahead to create a vacuum pocket at the projected impact site to muff any sound that might alert any nearby natives. That was paramount in its mind. None of the planet's natives must ever know or ever be affected even in the slightest by any awareness of others in the universe. It was the prime directive it swore to die than ever break.

So its hearts all leapt together in shock and horror at the view screen as a tiny dot in the center of the impact zone swiftly ballooned in one second into the astonished face of an adolescent female native a microsecond before the screen flashed into blackness and a savage quake gripped the ship –

"Yo! Yamato! Nagamori Yamato!!"

Yamato's plum-colored eyes blinked out of the vivid vision and turned from the skies beyond the high school classroom windows while she witlessly brushed her light cinnamon hair from her face back to her long dove-tailed ponytail as she sheepishly looked up at smirking thirty-something blonde Nanako Kuroi –

And the moment Yamato did, her mind was rushed with a flurry of images, like a downcast wallflower Nanako at her prom, a seven-year-old Nanako dropping her birthday cake, Nanako on a sailboat with friends, young Nanako falling off her bike in front of a truck –

"Hey, still daydreaming, Yamato, eh? Stop staring like that!!"

Yamako blinked again and the images vanished. "S – S – Sorry sensei," she softly apologized and not without a little needless guilt; There were many times not long ago when her sulky surly persona would've told her sensei to go to –

"I wasn't daydreaming, honest, sensi!" Yamato exclaimed.

It was true – it wasn't a fantasy – but how can you explain otherwise?

'Konata-san has it easy,' Yamato rued. 'All her video games might be make-believe worlds, but they're still real and shared by billions...but mine are –'

"Then what were you doing, eh?" Nanako asked in her scissor voice, "Counting birds?"

"I..." Yamato bit her lower lip, knowing she'd never be believed in any case. "But I really was listening, sensei! Honest!"

"Really? Then what was I discussing the last few minutes?"

"Last few minutes? Uh...uh..."

"Yes??..." Nanako's ruler patted her palm like a eager rattler anxious to strike. Yamato's well-rounded blouse heaved with her anxiously drawn breath as her feathery eyelashes knit tight and she concentrated and recalled from mid-air;

"In...in the early 1600's, Japan closed itself off from normal contact with the rest of the world in a policy was known as sakoku rule when the government allowed ships from Holland and from China to trade in Japan, but only occasionally and only at the port of Nagasaki and it prohibited Japanese people from traveling to other countries. In 1853, United States naval officer Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived at Tokyo Bay on a mission for the U.S. government to open diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with four warships and began talks with Japanese rulers and signed a treaty of friendship in 1854 and trade treaties with the United States and other Western countries in 1858 –"

'Awesome multitasking!' Yamato clucked in fascination to herself, 'And what's even cooler I didn't even hear a word she said!!'

"– and Emperor Mutsuhito - who took the title Meiji – did much to further Westernization by taking control of Japan from the shogun in 1867. He transferred the capital from Kyoto to Edo in 1868 and moved into Edo castle and Edo was renamed Tokyo. After 1868, Japan rapidly adopted Western styles and inventions –"

"That's enough! No need to show off!" Nanako said, straining from her admonishing voice that she was actually impressed. "I'll give you a break since you're a new transfer, Yamato, but next time pay a little respect and face the one delivering the lectures, not the swallows, alright? You don't want me to mistake your sky gazing for sheer inattention like Izumi there, right?" she said, gesturing to a diminutive blue-tressed girl who was holding her head and groaning like a bad toothache, only it wasn't a tooth but a apricot-sized sizzling red lump shoving an ahoge out of the way. Yamato's dismay suddenly felt a burning sore on top of her head that made her wince before she willed-off the chance empathetic link and wondered whether any of Her Other's instincts which rubbed off on her would've allowed her to be attacked like that, no matter how innocuous it was.

"Uh, yes, sensei, I will. Promise."

The hall bell rang. Yamato sighed.

P.E. up. Next best thing to sports now.

Yamato scooped up her books and trailed others out the door into Ryouou Gakuen High's class change hustle and bustle. Somehow it all seemed like needless silly confusion to her, and with a witless leak of a smug smile she shook her head;

'Like, look at them! Tripping all over themselves to sweat over lessons and cram exams like their lives depended on it, yet it almost feels like I'm sleepwalking in first grade here!...but that's not really fair, right?" she reconsidered, humility sheepishly chiding heady arrogance; 'I mean just because I can now recall anything I glimpse and feel history like a memory and know math like a song and a whole lot more doesn't mean I'm not normal as they are! I really don't want to look a freak like in junior high again, even though now I'd probably be the ultimate one to them!''

Distracting her lament, the corner of her eye caught several boys casting tactless ogles of her slender legs from ankle to mid-thigh hem and it rushed her with giddy pleasure as she struggled to feign ignorance and held her books tighter against her plump bosom with affected modesty.

'Don't wonder what they're thinking! Don't!!' she admonished herself with an inner giggle, basking in the "new girl" spotlight. 'So this is what being noticed for all the right reasons is like! Better than people looking at you like you're some weirdo snob...but then, once I kinda deserved it, right? At least Tey had an excuse from being totally clueless about emotions and understanding how humans think. Funny. It took my being someone else so totally different from anything you could imagine before I learned how to handle my own issues and attitude –'

Yamato nearly tripped when tiny Konata suddenly cut in front of her to scurry on ahead, the long flag of her blue-sheened tresses flitting Yamato's face, but instead of swearing and snapping like her recent incarnations, Yamato's heart somberly swelled; 'And sometimes a gift's not so cool, like smelling in Konata and Yutaka the Nagasaki radiation gene damage that's made their family's women short and sickly ever since that war that we're not supposed to think about.'

Up ahead, Hiiragi Kagami hastily wound through the mob to confront Konata with some scolding then some tender head massaging. Yamato sympathetically smiled; "Admit your feelings to her, Kagami-san! You've nothing to be embarrassed at and everything to gain! Konata won't know what to say and she won't laugh back either. Life's too short for shyness and jealousy and hate. I know, because I – really shouldn't even be alive...'

Yamato paused to take sober stock of the school's chaotic normalcy, even as several fresh ghostly montages of different scenes flitted in her mind of a high school in turmoil amid bizarre multi-dimensional and astral perils and earthquakes and strange scrambled personalities.

Timelines from hell.

Yamato shook her head; 'Thank goodness I'm finally in one that's not only free from causing the accident that started everything which never happened here, but one that's a whole lot better than the one I was born in where I should be long stone dead now, and all of this very, very different...'

Though it happened weeks ago, it was hard to believe that in another time-line a happy high school festival could've so changed her tumultuous life.

And an alien's.

'And it took getting smeared like strawberry jelly and didn't even feel it coming,' Yamato soberly mused with a slight shiver. 'I should be so pissed at My Other for that, but it really was a stupid thing for me to be doing at the time. Half falling down all over myself taking a short cut through that field late at night to reach my bedroom window after sneaking out to those nice college guys' dorm to party and get plastered and – other stuff. No wonder my foster mom and dad back there always had a cow with me – but probably mostly just to throw mud at another! At least I got a second chance now and nobody here will ever know just how wild all those times were at getting it right!'

As she passed the cafeteria Yamato's eye caught sight of a pretty bespectacled brunette chatting with a tall taciturn one with short green hair and a bubbly tiny one with magenta twintails, then suddenly the brunette seemed to catch herself in some kind of private blooper and sheepishly groaned aside from the quizzical other two.

Yamato smiled and shook her head;

'Hiyori's at it again with Yutaka and Minami! If they could only see what she's imagining too!' Yamato thought, with a whim of effort instantly seeing above Tamura Hiyori's head a hazy lilac cloud where Kobayakawa Yutaka was reaching to fondle Iwasaki Minami's flat blouse then it popped like a soap bubble as Hiyori groaned and sheepishly stormed out.

Yamato shook her head with indelible awe; 'It's so totally awesome what My Other left me – but what good's a secret if you can't share it with someone??' she rued, and just then someone tickled her nape and Yamato stifled a groan as she feigned surprise in whirling before an amber-eyed grinning girl with short boyish flaxen locks.

"How's zit goin', stranger??"

"Hi Ko-senpai," Yamato said to her trendy junior high friend and president of Ryouou High's Animation Research Club.

"Hey, Ya-sama, you been hiding from me or what?"

Yamato wanely smiled back in the fresh reappraisal of a relationship she originally neither invited or really desired;

So weird! Ko's one of the few people who've little changed from the time-line I was born in, unlike my great mom and dad here...and maybe that's God's price for that..."

Yamato and Ko fell in together in junior high mostly because Ko sensed loner Yamato's pine for a soul mate to break from bitterness and disenchantment with life under the wing of a mother whose boyfriends regularly dropped in while a scarce father was too dedicated to the job to ever be home. It was bad enough Yamato felt like an 'accident' that was the sole glue of their marriage, but their hypocrisy to home, honor and harmony turned her cynical, untrusting and withdrawn. Though Ko wasn't exactly a yori predator, neither was she immodest in her interest in Yamato and was patient at seeming empathetic without patronizing at approaching the aloof and temperamental Yamato. First wary, Yamato quickly found solace with one willing to overlook her curt and petulant attitude and saw herself as finally landing her first true unconditional friend, though she knew the reputation of the clique of other girls Ko hung with. They gave Yamato the funny feeling that she was somehow an embarrassment and challenge to Ko because her qualms resisted the more outlandish hugs and cuddling Ko often exchanged with them, and not with a little unease did Yamato wonder what it'd been like today had they entered Ryouou together two years ago.

Now in a new time-line, it was with all-too familiar quiet apprehension that Yamato sensed their resumed 'friendship' blossoming in a manner increasingly uncomfortable in the fertile hormone-laced atmosphere of a new high school, thanks to the wildest of interstellar misfortunes and dominoes of coincidences.

'I haven't been avoiding anyone, Ko-san. I'm just getting used to this school and my new classmates. I mean, I've never been in a high school with boys too, you know?"

"Hey, who needs guys when we're close buddies, uh??" gibed Ko with an excessive squeeze.

"Uh. well...I'm trying to get a boyfriend to see what one's like – like other girls, you know?" Yamato demurred and Ko snickered.

"Hey, you got all next year for that! You're supposed to be studying now, right?" Ko teased, then suddenly her fingers were strumming Yamato's ribs and nape, and for a moment Yamato gasped under the familiar rush of a helpless giddiness before her desperation simply willed her nerves off like a light switch. It was like Ko was just tickling a manikin and she frowned in bewilderment.

"What the hey?? You ought be rolling all over the floor in stitches!"

"It wouldn't matter how'd that look in front of everyone here too either?" Yamato mildly retorted and bewildered Ko stopped and frowned at her friend.

"Geeze, you've sure mellowed down some, Ya-sama! Bet you you were racking all kinds of high marks for MariMite and walking prissy in that ladies school, huh?"

Yamato forced herself to chuckle at her friend's joke; "Hijiri Fiorina's really not the school for delinquent girls people think it is, Ko. They're just more into – preparing people with real crummy life issues for regular work, that's all'!"

"Yea, a real charm school! So why'd you go? To escape my tickles?"

Yamato wanted to voice her true relief in that; "You know my entrance scores couldn't hack it coming here back then, Ko-san. Besides, I didn't have a say in it."

"Well, what if you had?" Ko grilled and Yamato gnashed her lower up and mused;

'So werid! If she only knew all the time-lines she got a black eye for coming on to me like this, when everyone here thought Tey was a snobby bitch just itching for a fight.'

"I'm just – trying out a new path, Ko-san," Yamato demurely professed, adding "–like you might want to try."

"Hey Ya-sama! Tryin' to dump me or what??"

"No, of course not! I mean, you were there when I really needed a shoulder to cry on, Ko-san." Yamato gratefully admitted which only exasperated her skittish quandary. "You kept me out of trouble and away from the wrong crowd, and I'll always be thankful for that."

"Huh! Sounds a 'Dear Jane' tex-mex!"

"No – really! I'm just saying – we should always try new things in a new place – like you always like to say in the anime club, you know?"

Ko looked back as though unsure how to answer when an annoying hall buzzer sounded.

"Shoot! I'll get back to you!" Ko said, taking off but not before a shoulder squeeze and a quick peck on the forehead and Yamato perfunctorily waved back before while nibbling her lower lip with rueful bemusement;

'Weren't for mom's sly feelly boyfriends making me cringe from being touched so, we'd probably would've been a lot closer long ago, though I'm – I'm still not sure whether that whole way's really in me...but even more troubling is can it also keep me from truly wanting a boyfriend or more here? Sometimes I wish I can forget the life I had in my born time-line instead of it haunting me here...'

A ringing late bell broke her pine and Yamato hurried onward to the gym locker room.

Yamato kept quiet to herself while the other girls chatted chatter which to her pumped perspectives felt pointless and inane, but she struggled to keep from disparaging them, reminding herself that despite the lingering smug high of Tey's almost omniscient awareness and maturity, she had to adjust to being in the humble grass of humanity again, even though she'd changed too much to be merely human anymore;

'In some ways I'm still the same, and others hardly!' Yamato reflected as she passed several mirrors and again she marveled how well she filled out her leggy curvy uniform against last term's flat lanky memory. Slender with blemishless baby-soft skin and a girlish face with hints of a demure woman whispering in it. She wasn't exactly drop-dead gorgeous yet but already it was definitely a vast improvement since junior high which owed little to puberty. She knew her feminine vanity should've felt tickled silly smug at being so endowed and enhanced, but that price had, among many things once taken as normal in the world, dramatically altered her perception of beauty, and was why her heart whithered whenever students laughed down anyone not fitting their arbitrary and bigoted standards of ideal comeliness.

Out on the school track far under the high-tension power lines Yamato vapidly followed the class apeing the P.E. sensei's exercises and warm-ups. "Now, three laps around the track!!" sensei called, blowing a shrill whistle.

The class tore ahead on the red clay track, but despite the awesome temptation Yamato reluctantly reined herself back and was hooted from behind.

"Move slow-poke!!" chaffed snotty Aki Tanaka jogging up and passing her and for a moment Yamato felt the urge to take the lead out and show-up the uppity class track star bitch.

In fact, make everybody's jaw drop–!

'Temper, Yamato, temper!" she admonished herself, "No sense exposing yourself by showing them up, even if you can beat Konata and Miriani just hopping on one leg now!'

It really was frustrating and at once awesome how Tey's lingering effect on her brain also seemed to permanently switch on a dosage of adrenalin and hormones and dormant animal-keen neurons;

'One day I'll have to find out all alone just how maxed-out my bod is! It feels like I'm every kind of Olympic athlete rolled up in one, but I've got to cool it if I want a normal life – and I so desperately want one since My Other's gone.'

Yamato felt her chest sink like a stone in the deep cold Mariana Trench.

Later sitting on the train home, Yamato's feathery cinnamon eyelashes knit together and she drew a soft psyching-up breath and remembered Altair like her own memories – even though her own eyes hadn't even seen the orange star in the night sky. Yet she knew that world intimately – even more than Earth. The warm rays of an orange sun against her skin, the balmy yellow clouds streaking a light mint sky, the rugged cliffs rolling with rusty-gold vegetation. Her remembrance was crisp as the living holodeck on a science fiction show, only it was another whole life and world.

Her Other's.

'Her Other.'

Yamato couldn't think of another term or identity for the alien who salvaged her life, even though it was for a cold pragmatic reason. She closed her eyes and recalled literally the last moments of a Other life...

**- - - -  
**

For the fifth time that season, Yamato stumbled half-drunkenly stumbled across the dark field for her distant house after jumping out of the snickering college jock's car and away from their sake binges' pawing and grabbing. She knew better – she always knew better but heeding common sense would've killed her chance to get back at her no-hear no-show parents and at the whole damn uncaring world.

She tripped into a grassy rut then while swearing at the stars saw something bright rushing at her and blotting out the world –

Yamato's instinct to cry out and throw her arms over her head in cowering terror was wasted. Like hammer of silence, she sensed she was suddenly no longer in a chilly open field but somewhere closed-in and warm and silent.

No crickets. No planes.

Just a soft hum.

Her eyes fluttered open inside an immense cloudy space, like inside a fog-filled cave or a hall of mirrors filled with misty vapor. In those stunned moments of gawking awe something like a low crackling sound popped in her head, like hearing static in stereo earphones then the strongest sensation of a presence beyond the fog.

"Omigosh, what happened??" she gasped, eyes huge with bewilderment and fear looking about at nothingness, then an even stronger dismay gripped her heart. "Omigosh. Am I – I dead??"

"Negative, Nagamori Yamato," softly boomed a man's voice with absolutely perfect Japanese diction inside her head, yet somehow it wasn't through her ears. "You are not deceased."

"Who – Who are you??" she half-whispered in a terrorized trembling voice.

"I have no name as humans perceptive in your limited concept of individuality, however you may address me as 'you' or 'hey' or 'yo' or whatever is most comfortable to you."

"I – I don't understand. Where are you? Who are you??"

"You needn't speak. Your thoughts are adequate enough."

"Uh? I – I don't understand –"

"For you to comprehend the situation would best be accomplished by a experience situation briefing linkage."

"By a what?"

"I will project in your mind a series of events that will render the situation clear if you willfully permit me."

Yamato's could barely quaver in fright. "My - my mind??"

"You apprehension can be alleviated in mere moments if you simply state your willingness. It will not hurt and saves much unnecessary and inefficient verbiage."

"Won't – hurt??" Yamato was too stunned and frightened to say no so she weakly nodded and for a moments it was like a static curtain passed her mind and in a manner more like sudden awareness than memory she suddenly _knew_ almost like casual knowledge that this was a benevolent alien from a gaseous giant world on an earth cultural survey mission. No, more than just objectively knowing that; it was like she was sharing its most recent experience like a home movie in her head.

Totally psyched out, Yamato's jaw fell as she found herself before the crystalline control panel surrounded by a 360-degree view screen of the universe, and right beneath her was Earth.

"Earth??" she exclaimed to herself in amazement and awe, yet strangely feeling everything was as familiar as routine – until now when quiet alarms rang.

'What's this??' she wondered aloud behind her unseen guide, feeling alarm that wasn't hers but feeling it as deep anyway. 'What is it?...it's some kind of gravitron wave distortion...where's it coming from??...from outside the space-time continuum! How irresponsible! The warp field's been disrupted...collapsing!...I'm too close this yellow sun's gravity well to adequately compensate... induced feedback! Fusing all circuits! Out of control. Entering Earth's atmosphere! No control. Engaging plasma verniers aim for the land on the edge of the greater ocean...activate navigation clearance force-field to cushion impact...all clear...

'Uh? What the Zon?? 'A native in the impact zone–??'

For microseconds Yamato saw her own face rush from a tiny dot in the center of the screen from her astonished look then a flash and –

Her cry aside breaking the link, staggering to her knees.

"I apologize for any distress that might've induced," the alien voice issued. "However, you took the link relatively well, compared other species."

"That's – easy for you to say!" Yamato tremblingly quipped, gathering her wits and composure but no longer fearing the immediate unknown, now feeling as familiar and casual with the alien as one might a third cousin who only drops by holidays. So much so that the awe, uniqueness, historical, philosophical and religious significance of such a first ever extraterrestrial contact was completely lost on her.

"You – You – hit me!" she snapped out in mortal indignation.

"It was an unavoidable faultless accident, as you saw yourself."

"Alright...sorry. so, how'd you get me out of in time?"

"I didn't."

"What do you mean 'didn't'? I'm here, aren't I?"

"You're thinking in zeo-Euclidian trans-spacial terms. Both my assertions are valid as I availed my wrap drive to generate a minor local time-line warp to retrieve you from the closest parallel time-line plane nano-seconds before impact."

"What? You mean like you went back in time and snatched me out just in time?"

"Negative. Time-line events are immutable bricks of the universe. The best that can be done is to propagate a branch or avail the alternative of close parallel time-line."

"Wait, wait! You're not making any sense! You sound just like I got whacked after all!"

"That is true of your parallel self that was indigenous to this time-line."

"What?? You're kidding!!"

"Negative. That former entity now coats the bottom of this vessel which my repair nano-bots must now wipe clean shortly before lift-off."

"What??" Yatamo staggered aback, numbness rushing her head. "What – what are you saying?? That I'm – I'm really – really dead??"

"The personal time-line of that entity has terminated, regretfully."

"So you're – you're saying that – that I'm – I'm really someone else??"

"Negative. You're the same entity."

"That makes no sense! Like, either I'm dead or I'm friggin' alive like now!"

"You're not comprehending in neo-spatial temporal terms. Any time-line variant of you is equally legitimate in the universe. It is analogous to the relativistic quality of the speed of light which is always constant anywhere regardless of perspective. You are still literally the same person no matter which time-space parallel you exist."

"But I – she got clobbered by your ship! Her life ended slam-bang!! I know! I remember it happening down to the last...mo...ment??" she puzzledly blinked. "So – so how come do I remember it happening like I'm the one who got hit??"

"It is as I stated, you're still the same person. Your continuity extends across countless parallels."

"You mean, in a way you don't really die from an accident or anything but your mind jumps somewhere else where you had better luck??"

"Spontaneous soul transmigration across time-planes is an extremely inviting and simplistic analogy, but it'd be more correct to say that one's variations share common trans-dimensional nodes."

"Okay, so you're saying I can be both smeared under this ship and talking to you the same time here because I'm the still the same person – like that makes any sense, right? Man, like do I have to brush up on my Einstein or what??" Yamato sighed and shook her head. "Well, least that's better than Hiyori's manga about some guy who didn't wanna beam out of his burning spaceship because he thought it just vaporizes you here and makes a clone of you somewhere else!"

"An excellent philosophical perspective and accurate when one's atomic particle-wave structure is simply remotely replicated and the local one disintegrated, however such does not apply in this instance."

"Somehow I feel a lot better that you said that! So, I guess I have to thank you so much for saving my life – kinda. But like, why go through all the trouble just for me?"

"It is the most basic remedy I can effect to preserve the continuity of a native of this time-line which is my prime as well and one I sworn never to interfere with."

"Well, I can appreciate why you wouldn't want an accident to spot a clean record, and I really appreciate all your trouble saving me, even if it's not really the same time-space place I really came from, right?"

"Except for a few minor subatomic frequency variations, this time-line is absolutely identical. Your life can proceed exactly as it did once before."

"Mom's still mom's, dad's still dad, uh?..." Yamato soberly voiced. "Uh, then, wouldn't they miss me from my real time-line if I'm in this one now instead?"

"They will miss you anyway."

"Huh?...oh, yea..." Yamato fell sober. "Man, that's a real downer. So my folks won't ever know what happened to me in my real time-line, huh? Like they'd miss me anyway..." she bitterly added then blushed. "Then you're really just using me from another time-line to patch up your mistake, uh?"

"Again, it was not my error. A rouge gravitron wave emanating from the future crippled my ship and caused the crash. Generating such irresponsible damaging space-time distortions in this galactic quadrant cannot be tolerated and I am empowered to correct such. Though this ship is still too damaged to signal base, its warp drive core is still capable of cloaking it and of locally bending time and space within a few miles and decades, and so I was able to trace the time-space co-ordinate origins of the gravitron distortions back to the Los Alamos metropolis of the planetary nation-state of the United States in the other hemisphere eleven point seven-three years hence."

"Cool. So now that you know exactly where you're gonna fix it, right?"

"Unfortunately, it is not so simple. Since I must not markedly influence this prime time-line I must be highly discrete in determining the parties responsible in its future time-stream, then modify their gravitron conception in the current time-stream here. A human social interface to accomplish these investigations and interrogations shall require an aboriginal host."

"Host? Why do I have a feeling I'm still in here and not out there right now is because there's one big punch-line coming?"

"You have a choice, Nagamori Yamato. I can immediately erase this encounter from your memory and return you to this time-line nano-seconds after this ship leaves, whereby you will believe that your besotted condition imagined something colliding you from the skies and will resume the life course your indigenous time-line self would've taken. The alternative will end the same way but after your assisting my effecting a minimal early time-line alteration to repair this common time-line."

"You – want me to help you fix what happened? But I – I don't know. I mean, I'm so grateful that you saved me – really, but I don't know how I can help."

"It is quite simple. Our minds will be merged."

"Uh?? M – M – Merge? Our minds??"

"Thus I will have possession of all your earth experiences and your enhanced human form to inconspicuously navigate the human world to effect my mission."

"Kidding! You can do that?? What am I saying? You're already talking inside my head! But – what happens to MY mind??"

"It will become an aspect of my mind. In fact, we shall create a new Half-Terran, Half-Altairian entity in the interim named 'Tey' in your stead."

"'Tey'? You mean I'll be something – er, someone else?"

"In a sense. Your body will host a new composite being that's telepathically linked with me."

"You mean like mind remote control?" Yamato fell diffident and unsure. "I – I don't know. I mean, I want to help you, but I think you're asking way too much of me. I mean, I'm just a kid. I haven't even been outside Honshu, forget Japan! Also...I'm – not really all that smart. Or nice. That's why I'm in Hijiri Fiorina."

"I will compensate for that intellectual deficit within Tey."

"No, what I mean is – is maybe I'm not such a good example for you to pick. I get into lots of trouble and fights and got a bitchy attitude and I'm not really all that into meeting people. Like, my new foster dad's so successful at work he's never home, and mom has boyfriends coming in and out who – like to fool around..." she voiced with a touch of cringing bitterness. "So you see, I really wouldn't be a good pick to save the world."

"You doubt your humanity."

"If you mean if my life sucks, royally."

"Nagamori Yamato, I cannot involve human innocents in my mission who weren't directly involved by a direct or indirect consequence of my race. You are my only alternative to resolve this situation without allowing corruptive time-line effects on your world's progress. These spatial distortions will affect galactic commerce in this entire sector through many time-space zones. It's creation must be surgically dealt with in its earliest stages in the time-line or forcefully in the future."

"Forcefully? What – what do you mean by that?"

"If this premature technology and all individuals concerned with it cannot be disrupted at conception, it must be eliminated."

"Eliminate? You mean – kill??"

"Regrettably."

"Easy for you to say! That's the kind of attitude that gives you alien guys a bad name!"

"You must comprehend the urgency to inhabited local stellar systems, Nagamori Yamato. It is as though a ship's new propulsion unit was being tested in Tokyo Bay, but its creators are unaware it is generating tsunami throughout the entire Pacific rim."

Yamato slowly nodded. "O–kay...I – understand. But why kill anyone? Can't you all just tell them to stop?"

"We are forbidden any contact with inferior species by our Prime Directive. We are sworn to death to uphold it to preserve the culture and technological innocence of native species. The sole extreme exemption is eliminating a clear and present danger to all, and this situation bears such."

"So there's no other way?"

"Only by preemptively defeating the obviously faulty gravitron concept in the earliest time period possible. There is a human phrase – 'to nip it in the bud'?"

Yamato lightly chuckled, "Funny. Never guessed any of that boring Shakespeare stuff would ever stick! But I thought you can't change things in a time-line without making another branch which wouldn't really be the same one anyway, right?"

"That is true of events that have already transpired. This renegade and illegal gravitron emanation so far has not directly affected this time-line plane outside my ship and its impact on you. No 'pun' intended. That's primarily why your replacing your time-line plane self here from the moment I depart will maintain her continuity and the consistency of this time-line as before."

"I see...so, if I don't go along with this, people will – die, huh?"

The alien paused. "As a victim of this arbitrary occurrence, you're under no obligation not to resume your life immediately if you desire, with this entire event erased from your memory."

Yamato snickered, suddenly feeling weirdly culpable in an indefinable way she didn't like nor understood. "Yea, erased from my memory but that doesn't erase the fact I could've kept people from being killed, right?" She shook her head. "Funny. All my life I never gave a crap about anybody or anything, and now I might end up royally screwing people I don't even know!"

"You doubted you had a conscience?" the alien asked, half-surprised and half-chiding and Yamato mulled that novel ego-tickling notion and glumly shook her head.

"Wouldn't be the only one who said I don't! I – I've...done lots of things to other people and myself that I'm not proud of and never gave a fig about while being bounced around foster parents who kept dropping me like a hot potato. Calling me a 'bad-egg', a thief, a liar, a bully, a delinquent, a – bitch since I was eight-years old. And you know, I deserved it and didn't give a frig! About me or nobody!" she passionately sputtered, "I mean, the only reason I'm not in jail or pregnant or dead in some alley right now is because there's always some sucker out there who cared enough about me for some sissy reason to pull my ass from the fire in time –!!"

"You are about to 'cry'. Explain that reaction."

"Ha!" Yamato cackled, wiping her damp eyes. "All that superior super brain alien stuff can't even figure out what simple tears are uh? What feelings are, huh? Don't you all have any?"

"My race possess emotions. They are simply incompatible with your understanding."

"Sorry, but that sounds like a crock."

"Allow me to use another analogy; do you think a roach can appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the Grand Canyon?"

"Uh...er...man! You sure have a way of putting a girl in her place, don't you?"

"You also long to make amends for all the things you regret doing?"

Yamato blushed. "You don't cut any slack, do you?"

"Reality is truth and fact, not matter what colors emotions paint them. How you are known at the terminus of all your time-lines will be for your last deeds, not your early foibles."

"Saying, I still have a chance to be a 'good girl'?" she snickered then instantly chided herself. "No, no. I didn't mean that. I've been a bad one all this long and look where it's gotten me. Stumbling half drunk out some field just a couple of burps from getting knocked up. I – I don't want to die a young fat nobody. I – really want someone to know that I really want to be better than I am, you know?"

"Then this is your chance for redemption, Nagamori Yamato."

"Even if it's just for selfish reasons like feeling good about myself for once?"

"Motive and vanity is irrelevant for this mission."

"I can see we're gonna have a great time sharing my skull together!" Yamato quipped, then ruefully realized with dismay; "Yea...but according to you, what's the point of making good since you'll erase everything I felt good about doing it after it's done? I'll be back my old crummy self, like nothing ever happened, right?"

"It is true. Your experience must not be allowed to contaminate this time-line. The only consolation I can offer you is that your memory and contribution preserving your time-line and saving countless lives will be remembered by a thousand races."

Yamato mulled with sober regard. "You were honest. You could've said anything else to trick me into helping you but you came right out with it. You know, you're the first – person I've ever talked deep with and meant it, and that means more than you can ever know...I guess..." She drew a deep breath of assurance and resolution and nodded. "Alright. At least I know right now that I really tried to do something to make a good difference for lotsa folks for once...even though I won't know squat later. Let's do it."

"Excellent. And you doubted you had a conscience!"

Yamato sheepishly blushed and old street pride scoffed. "Hey hey, I'm no marshmallow! I just wanna keep up my end of a deal for saving my life – kinda, that's all! Like, you're going through a lot to fix something you had nothing to do with to keep my world halfway normal all alone, and I respect that. I mean, I'm from a country that barely teaches kids like me that it started a god-awful war long ago, you know?"

"A sense of responsibility is just as noble. Then such concepts are nearly 'alien' to you, are they?"

"Why do I get the feeling you're kinda smug saying that?" Yamato quipped then winced from a brief scramble of mind-static. "What was that you just thought? I didn't understand."

"My apologies. My raw response slipped telepathic translation. My mind is too complex and incongruous for your human brain to comprehend; it's challenging enough to interpret your thoughts at the lowest elementary level. I was – amused by your chagrin."

"You mean that was a laugh? Huh! Well, if we – 'merge minds' – I'd understand how much of laugh it was to you, right?"

"As Tey you would be me. You will know all I know and I all of you, though your human mind alone couldn't comprehend your experience as Tey outside some sensory impressions even if I didn't erase your mission memories afterward."

"Too bad. It would've been cool. "

"I surmise your sense of responsibility and curiosity is anxious for the experience."

Yamato chuckled and shook her head. "Yea, for once in my life! If you only knew how many times I've flipped the bird to teachers and grown-ups pushing me to do anything!"

"'The bird'?"

"Yea. Er, thought you can read my mind."

"That's the unauthorized invasion of a sovereign entity's conscience. I'm simply interfacing."

"Man, you got as many rules on your back as school has!" she chirped then somberly looked down the misty floor. "Well, since we're gonna be so close, isn't it about time you show me what you look like?"

"It is not necessary."

"Not necessary?? Hey, I'm letting you mess inside my brain! How much worst can a look-see be, huh?"

"I reserved that until after your decision. Primitive emotions are very disruptive to human reason."

"In other words you were afraid that if I saw you first that the next part of me you'd seen would've been the soles of my shoes, right? Whatever happened to trust, huh?"

"Very well, Nagamori Yamato. Only remember you still have a liter of sake and two kilos of assorted dorm take-outs in your stomach," the alien warned then the thick fog parted and Yamato gasped and kept looking up and up...and up –

"Awesome!!..." she breathed aloud, then puzzlement rushed her. "O wow, but like this is so freak-out weird! Look, like nothing personal okay, but is it because all this is really a dream or I'm sake-stewed outta my skull, but how come I'm not creeped-out crapping in my panties after screaming to death right now? I mean, it feels like – like you're no more special or different than seeing myself in a mirror!"

"Because when I passed my experience situation briefing linkage to you, it was framed within the pattern of my consciousness which has subliminally familiarized your perception of me."

"Cool view! The bullies at school can sure use some of that when they laugh at homelies!" Yamato quipped then drew a fortifying breath of will to quell anxiety. "Well, I'm ready...I guess. Just remember you're gonna be real shocked finding out that I'm no princess upstairs! So, what do I gotta do?"

"Nothing. Just be yourself for the moment."

Nervous, Yamato steeled herself, not knowing what to expect or sense, but in the first moments she felt oddly lighter, like while chugging back sake with all those grabby college guys but then it felt like her mind and memory was wafting out like cigarette smoke in an empty room, lifting her, spreading her mind out into a blinding haze...

**- - - -  
**

Yamato pinched between her eyes in the train and sighed with frustration.

No matter how many times she strained to remember, it was impossible to recall exactly what being Tey was like; at most it was much like a sleepwalking dream, being a backseat passenger to the alien behind the wheel. For sure, she sensed it was fully shared experience merged with the alien and she had some conscious input; maybe a little too much, since ironically and a little embarrassingly Tey relied on Yamato's aspects to interface with society, only her alien aspect didn't seem to understand that her jaded, aloof and often brusque persona wasn't exactly a passport to good relations. She faintly sensed how her side's sheepish admission of that took her alien side aback and caused not a little internal confusion before Tey got her demeanor straightened out some, and Yamato later found herself thankful that that first self-improvement move had stuck, even if it was by proxy.

Tey's first mission took her one and only long range time trip to Los Alamos on the week of the fateful test, popping into the lab's personnel office to pluck the project's scientists' names from the child-easy encoded data bank then popping outside before security even knew a teenage girl was deep an ultra-secure facility. But Tey's work had barely begun, and somewhat abashedly Yamato recalled her precocious passage into wielding feminine wiles...

**- - - - -  
**

While busily rummaging his pockets for his car keys while walking around the store's corner, Dr. Lester Humbert collided into something slim and soft and holding a grocery bag which crashed to the sidewalk with the tinkling of shattered glass.

"Oh no –!"

"O I'm sorry!!" Lester blurted in terminal chagrin, quickly stooping after the mini-skirted young lady who was trying to collect her scattered groceries, yet even in his chagrin the back of his mind took a break to notice how nicely rounded her bending knees were just below a half-buttoned blouse from whose depths peeked twin huddled creamy crests –

Wow!

He wrested his bugged whetted eyes aside. "Er, oh damn, I'm sorry – for bumping into you!"

"It's – It's alright. I should've been watching," the willowy teen said, and Lester made the instant deduction from her neo-Hanna Montana looks and manner that she was probably in early high school though her short-skirted tartan jumper looked more junior high.

A level five lolicon. Easy.

"Don't touch that," Lester warned her of the shattered mayonnaise and soy sauce bottles. "Er, look, I'll pay for that."

"No, you really don't have to –"

"No, I insist! My eyes should've been a lot wider – and besides, you deserve a break today! Er, sorry, didn't mean it that way!"

The teen smiled at his fake mis-speak and lightly shrugged. "Okay. Go ahead."

"Huh?"

"Like – with what you were doing, like, you know??" she twittered.

"Er. sure..."

'Damn, she's daffy!' Lester thought. 'It's like she's over-acting a faked pose role-playing her teen idols to look cool for want of having any starry personality herself. Heck if that's how she wants to play it then I'm in the game!'

Ever fancying himself the suave lady-killer, Lester grinned at his luck;

'Make that Lester the lolicon-killer! Yea!!'

"Well, let's get these broken things replaced and move on from there, right??" he said to her giggle.

He was surprised how effortlessly it was getting her in tow, as though caution and wariness never entered that pretty head, and he quickly decided that she was even younger than he first assumed. That she really was in junior high but possessing the bod of a senior high bunny.

Lolicon level ten!

Lester weighed proceeding on in public this way; so far no one in town or the projected suspected his true pedo-ogling proclivities beyond a very open and innocent part-time photographer of civic groups and nursing homes and year books and troop picnics of Boy – and especially Girl Scouts. Not to mention the cheapest model portfolio shots in the state. He was very discrete about his closet inclinations with the eager nubile starlet-wannabes who flashed and twisted into beaming pretzels at his direction for photos he'd 'submit' to 'leading model magazines' when they were really ending up plastered on foreign "'Tween Model" internet sites. Still, he longed to more than merely touch his subjects with strobe lights, but it'd take one dumb eager gullible bunny for him to risk breaking with Tantalus's fate; one who'd trust him completely beyond her parents and friends and common sense and swallow hook-line-and sinker every line he had.

'But this one just might make me take the plunge!' he anticipated, swallowing back drool. But first you had to coax the dumb bunny into the lair...

Standard carrot line now! "Say, it's nearly lunchtime? Say I treat you to make up for the trouble I cause, eh?"

Her slim pink fingernail touched her lips while her quizzical eyes rolled. "Uhhh...you don't really have to –"

"I insist – or I won't be able to sleep tonight!" he quipped and she coyly smiled and nodded like a puppy.

"Well, uh, like – I wouldn't want you to do that, especially for such a kind nice guy!"

Lester grinned and swore at his luck. "Er, just call me 'Lester'," he prompted, perfunctorily extending a neutral hand – for now.

For a moment she looked at his hand as though momentarily bemused what to do before some inner notion kicked her aware; "Oh! Of course! Er, I'm Stella!" the bunny shyly said, her slim manicured hand shaking his.

'Yes...nice slim soft hands, like she must all over!'

"Well, hello Stella! And a heavenly name matching you to a 'T'!"

She coyly tittered and his anticipation clicked up a few more notches.

Lester treated her a lush lunch at Applebee's and he stifled his grin at how she gawked the place like she was at the Taj Mahal, though instead of ordering sirloin with all the trimmings like him, she choose hamburger platter with onions and fries. Not that he expected anymore from a callow calf. Their worlds began and end between their iPods and the next concert on TV. Such sweet unsophisticated gullible innocence – in a ripe womanly package too! Another thing, Lester noted. The girl almost seemed to act in cliches, and not just borrowing pop culture lingo to slick by either. Like a hunter who must know his quarry's haunts and habits, Lester perceived in the girl traces of gestures and behavior skimmed straight from Lindsay Lohan, Hanna Montana and Paris Hilton, with a little Olsen Twins thrown in.

'Geeze! Didn't this ditzy doll have any personality of her own? Not that it really matters if it lands her in my basement photo studio'...'

The plusses were sure notching up for this one!

Lolicon eleven!

His sidelong glances savored how her short-skirted knees were crossed under the table and her top blouse buttons unbuttoned almost level with her armpits as though teasing him with covered well-rounded bounties below..

'Man, if only I could pack her up to Thailand and have some real legal whoppee!'

"I like your accent, Stella," he smoothly remarked over grilled asparagus. "Where you from?"

"Accent? From?" A quizzical look flitted her face then she tittered off abashment. "Oh, like the regional dialect thing? Uh, I been around."

"Where? Scandinavia?"

"Er, you mean the Norway-Sweden-Finland peninsula, correct?"

"You're just guessing that, right cutes?" he teased her cute giggle. "Well, I say you're pretty mature for eighth grade, Stella. In fact, more mature than most high school girls I know," Lester silkily commented, knowing she'd be assuming he was complimenting her mind, and when she giggled and her plum eyes rolled he grin in conviction. "See? You're prime candidate!"

"Candidate?"

"As a model."

"Model?? Me??" she scoffed with affected vain denial.

"Hey, I ought know! I do some free-lance talent searching on the side, and I supply lots of magazines and movies out there with sample pictures of the next best thing since they're always on the lookout for a fresh face and fine figure. In fact, I think you'd make great material for a commercial they want me to find a girl for!"

The girls' plum eyes widened even more-so, as-though it was even possible; "Me?? Model??"

Hook...

"Sure. All it takes is a test shot and I send it in and wait for their answer."

"Model? Like in Seventeen and Oui and Me??"

"Yup! All my clients. I fact, to show you how much faith I have in your charms, I'll do a sample shot of you and send it in without my five hundred dollar fee!"

"Five hundred dollars??"

"That's cheap. Some studios bill you five grand for a mug shot – but like I said, I think you're winner so I can't lose anything!"

"Kidding?? O wow!!"

Line...

"Now if you want, we can do a screen test at my studio apartment Monday – or a quickie just before I drop you and your groceries off at your house."

She shook her head. "Got school all Monday."

"Oh. Too bad. If this works, you'll never have to go to any class ever again."

Her eyes exploded; "No more classes?? " she excitedly gushed. "Like, no more school?? Just from taking pictures?? Uh – sure!!"

"Sure – like on your way home, right?"

"Right!!"

And sinker!!

"Great!" he said, barely keeping from smacking lips. "I'll change my schedule and squeeze you in, how's that?"

"Great!! Oh wow! Me – a model!! Awesome! So, that's what you do, take pictures of models?"

"Oh, I take pictures of other things too that are very important."

"Like what??"

He chuckled. "Oh, interesting things I can't talk about to stunning young ladies!" he gibed like it wasn't supposed be taken seriously.

"I bet you're a real important guy too!" she coyly tittered with a stroking voice as lush as pink lips clasping her vanilla malt's straw and softly sucked while her eyes smiled back.

Lester's fists went sweaty at his sides; 'Damn! She's a thing for me! No crap!'

He smoothly chuckled. "Er, kind of."

"Oh?? Like??"

"Er, like it's top secret! Government hush-hush stuff!"

"Really?? Com'on, tell me! I won't squeal! Cross my heart!" she chirped, finger flitting over her nicely rounded blouse. He chuckled like licking chops.

"Well, see I've swore to secrecy. If I told you I'd have to kill you!" Lester loved that line.

The girl's pretty nose simpered like a child denied an ice cream cone before a coy smile. "Well, can you kinda do me a favor instead??"

"For you, cutesy? Name it!"

"Can you right now imagine the most important thing you're doing in your job?"

"What?"

"I just want to see if I could see it through your eyes!"

Lester chuckled. "That's a new one!"

"Well, don't they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul?"

"Well, mine have very thick curtains!"

"Pleeaseee?? I want to see through your eyes at all the top secret stuff you're working on to see whether you tell the truth, even though you seem like such an awful nice man!"

Lester had to keep from cackling out loud; '"For a cute thing like you, sure, no problem!"

'Yea, no sweat, my flaky little bunny. Play my cards right and I'll have more than just a new photo pony...'

With eager enthrall, Lester gazed back her coy plum eyes. "You know, you've a pair of really stunning orbs there, Stella."

"Then let's play stare chicken too – real deep!" she demurely coaxed and he chuckled.

"Sure! The deeper the better I say!" he japed, his eyes straying at her nicely filled blouse and the rim of creamy thigh peeking just over the edge of the table.

The girl frowned. "Liar! Thinking naughty thoughts instead!" she admonished.

"Huh? Er, how would you know?"

"Because – I just do! You're not thinking about your – job stuff like our promise!"

"Well, if you're such great little a mind reader, why don't you just pluck my secrets out of my brain?"

"Because our laws forbid invasive scanning of innocent aboriginals for whatever reason!"

"Laws? Aborginals??"

The girl tittered and shrugged. "I mean, isn't it an invasion of privacy if someone's not offering what you want??"

"Mmm...that's good way of thinking of it. Of course it helps if permissions go both ways, right?" he teased and she chuckled.

'Hmm. This flit can obviously sense by my expression whether I'm being truthful or ''naughty' or not, so she's probably not as innocent as I thought. What the heck, humor the bunny! It's not like she's a security breech crashing 'the windows of my soul...'

Lester grinned and bore his eyes into hers and casually imagined the minor particle accelerometer glitch the project had irony out, and in his amusement noticed how the nymphet's eyes held fast on his, seemingly drawing his fascination into their swimmy plum depths. It was weird, but it was like her pellucid gaze was also swirling, casting a languor over him like some aloof daydream daze...

"You're very smart, Lester..." she remarked with a soft sultry eerily echoey voice. "Where did you get the basic concept for the gravitron wave generator?"

"Uh? How – how you know about that?" he quizzically replied in his sleepy daze in the same echoey way, softly caught and teased in those luminous shimmering plum eyes.

"Answer my question, Lester – or there'll be no cookies tonight – right?..."

"Cookies??" he blurted before her coy tongue-brushed smile and weren't for his weird almost drunken-high puppy-eager languor would've fallen off his choice;

'Wish!'

'Oh hell, it's just a daydream...go ahead and play along this fluffy fox!'

"Uhh...from a talk I had with another honor student at his high school festival while I was on a trip in Japan..."

Her soft dreamy voice asked; "He gave you the concept of the gravitron wave generator?"

"Uhh...yes...we – played around with a couple of thought exercises about it and developed the idea..."

"And nothing more came from it? No follow up?"

"Uhhh...no, because he was hard at studying for tests and I had to fly home for my MIT entrance exam so I forgot all about it until thinking of a thesis for my masters."

"Did anyone else in your project conceive as much?"

"Uhhh...no.'" he docilely answered and her pause of pregnant relief and intrigue gave him a lull in the daze to ask, "Uhhh... you sound way older than any kid...way older."

"Keep your eyes in mine and mind what I'm saying."

"Uhhh...yes, Stella..."

"What high school was it that you two met, Lester?"

"Uhhh...It was – Ryouou Gakuen High I think..."

"Near the Tokyo metropolis of the planetary nation-state of 'Japan'?"

"Uhhh...yes..."

"What was this student's name who inspired you so?"

"Uhhh...name...it was...was...I – don't remember..."

"Think hard!" she snapped and he winced, but somehow it felt too soft to slight him.

"Uhhh...I – am...but I don't – remember. I don't even think I asked...it was just – idle speculation at the time..."

The girl groaned, somehow looking a little disappointed then her dimming eyes drew back and suddenly his daydream daze cleared and bemused he pinched his eyes.

"Er, sorry...what was that? About our 'promise'? Sorry. Guess I – er, was spellbound by those lovely eyes of yours."

"Further specious flattery is unnecessary, Dr. Humbert," the rising girl uttered in a dry almost monotone voice that took him aback, just like her suddenly bland stoic visage. "Local Earth custom obliges me to thank you for that meal. Thank you."

"Huh? You're leaving? Right now??"

"Affirmative. You've provided me the critical information I sought. My mission to this advanced time-line is accomplished although I've much work ahead which will take much longer than simply interrogating you and your colleagues, though your perverted mind-set made this session much easier." "

"My colleagues? What they gotta do with this? Why you talking like some kind of robot for?"

"Correction. I am an enhanced indigenous biological being hosting an Altairian-Terran symbiotic consciousness. However, your critique concerns me if I'm to inconspicuously infiltrate the student body of Ryouou Gakuen high school," the girl uttered with concern then suddenly back a ditzy doll again, hopping on the edge of table with nicely crossed knees before him with a giddy grin like a cutesy bad actress trying to please at audition. "Like, does this demeanor appeal equally well for interrogating adolescent human males as it has with adult males as yourself and your colleagues, Dr. Humbert??"

"Huh??" Lester said before a grin passed his face. "What a minute! They set me me up, right? It's a joke! You're really some kind of little Japanese cosplay chick, aren't you?"

The girl sighed and stood up stoic again; "Such thespian skills would've been useful for my mission, unfortunately such is not in my Terran aspect's repertoire, although this pose was its notion to glean notable media personalities to compile a behavior to best interface your kind with. Interestingly, my Terran aspect has always timidly contemplated what it'd be like making insincere carnal overtures with a human male, though my Altairian aspect is bemused by such wasteful poses and pretenses. Hopefully I needn't avail these inefficient social techniques to persuade adolescent humans to discern the identity of your theory inspirer."

"Theory inspirer? What do you mean?"

"I mean my preventing your gravitron field meson density miscalculations from impacting the space-time continuum and my warp drive and civilizations beyond."

Lester braced. "Grav –?? How – How you know about that??"

"You needn't security concerns, Dr. Humbert, This information won't matter since this time-line branch from the moment I collided into you won't exist once I return to my prime time-line. Thus further conversation is pointless, so if you pardon, I'll be on my way," she uttered with a stiff bow and turned to leave but stopped and faced him again as though for a insipid critique; "Though I barely comprehend human pride and their emotions are confusing and contrary to me, I – feel – that your excessive intrigue in my affected pose was most – demeaning. Have a good day, Dr. Humbert," she said with a terse bow, short skirt swirling as she marched off.

Dumbfounded, Lester rose to take off after her – after hastily paying the blocking waitress's check, and saw her turn the corner.

"Hey! Wait, you sly little–!" he called, turning the corner and jolting to a bewildered stop seeing –

Nothing.

**- - - - -  
**

'Can't believed I carried on all sly and sassy like that around all those scientists!' Yamato giggled with a blush, recalling Tey's femme fatale stereotypes from the old romance movies she loved. 'Too bad I don't have the nerve to wing those corny lines now to catch a boyfriend, just like all the times while I – Tey was hunting down Lester's festival pal!'

Still, even Tey learned that imitating Ingrid Bergman and Hannah Montana had its limits when she returned to the present to enroll at Ryouou as Nagamori Yamato transfer student to glean her classmates' interests and talents for a match with Lester's mystery geek friend-to-be. It took time for Tey to learn and mellow her unintentionally curt moody attitude around humans she was covertly investigating. In fact, it took several dozen hops back into new timelines chasing nerd and geek red herrings before on the eve of one's festival Tey discovered who the closet geek was and, by and skittish wiles, managed to distract the two from meeting, effectively throwing back the gravity drive's development time enough for not so careless or eager project reviewers to uncover the hazardous flaw in the science. Enveloped in a time-pocket isolating her from the consequence of altering prime timelines, and with whose space ship minimally self-healed, Tey returned to Ryouou where she not only had acquired new friends as Yamato, but felt it was a better timeline for her earth half to resume a life anew.

Tey's self-disassociation into alien and human was to've been gentle as meiosis, leaving Yamato asleep under a blossoming cherry tree, a new transfer student oblivious of ever being an alien host, but instead it was the traumatic suicidal rifting of a sovereign entity that literally levitated Yamato's convulsing body after Her Other's disembodied mind. It was a gut-wretching experience and memory that took Yamato weeks to handle; it was like being born, giving birth, giving birth to yourself and losing both parents and limbs and eyesight all at once. Yamato still ached and pined from losing Her Other and prayed that her skittish tread into romance might at least partially fill the painful voids in her head and chest. But then the split from being Tey, outside the pain, hadn't been entirely clean either. She knew it wasn't supposed to've happened and undoubtedly Her Other was unaware it had, but then it was probably so subtle and innocuous and quietly indelible that it could've been overlooked, like fingerprints left behind by a maid.

As in leaving behind an entire new alien life for Yamato to remember.

Yamato recalled alien friends and relatives light-years away who she never met. In fact, she even had a family. Her own family. Six grown keva and two tyads. And too often in her wondering 'back there' Yamato wretchedly missed them. Her heart crimped at the thought of never ever seeing them or stroking another's tentacles or knowing another mating or budding more keva...

That was another awesome flip out; feeling completely natural in a form that once would've totally grossed her out just looking at before fainting dead away, yet Yamato didn't reject or resent the memories Her Other left her; along with a new shift of universal perspectives she literally knew several human lifetimes worth of experiences no human ever imagined and which she herself barely grasped. As far as Yamato was concerned she had dual citizenship of two very different worlds and races and wouldn't disown her Altairian 'life' anymore than her Earthbound one. What made it even more awesome was that she wasn't swamped by her Altairian memories. Like a teasing background haze most all of it was cloudy, waiting for her to wade through and explore like recalling a beach trip of several summers ago, only these would be fresh new adventures to her Earthling consciousness, and she fancied spending her whole summer vacation visiting incredible places and indulging alien experiences without leaving her room or touching any computer or TV.

Yamato counted herself infinitely fortunate to've died and returned a fuller being than she ever imagined, yet there was a nagging feeling that though the time-line was fixed and events set right, that somehow there was something left untold. Not with time or the world but herself.

It was as though, even when all which had happened was indeed by accident, meeting Her Other wasn't entirely a fluke.

Crashing her sober ponder was Yamato's chance sight of a teen couple snuggling together and she blushed in wistfulness; "Uh, anyway, I've other things that's more here and now to think about, like a new life and cool parents and a clearer attitude to find new friends with...and maybe more...'

'Like – boys??

'I mean real boys who really care about your feelings and aren't just out to feelly a score like – too many I trusted too early... Funny! Half of My Other's brains rubbed off me so much that I hardly need to go to school and I know about how things work that haven't even been invented yet, but I still know squat about boys or what to say to them to get them to say – hello!...

'Man! A lotta good my Altairian adulthood's gonna be!'

The teen couple brashly giggled and nuzzled and Yamato's modest pounding bosom heaved with a prayer's sigh; "Please God, don't let me be disappointed anymore in my life, please! If it happens again...well, there's another I can fall back on but it's like home's fifty-light-years away!"

Mulling how to appeal to male schoolmates, Yamato left the train under a dark overcast drizzle for the bus stop, even her keen senses missing in the railway terminal a tall figure in a dark Fedora, sunglasses and long black coat who drew on a expensive cigar and watched her climb onto a bus home.

Click. Click. Click...

END CHAPTER ONE

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90 composed on iPhone during boring communes.


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